Can you Feel It Now? (Petra x Levi)
by SecretWishX
Summary: Petra, a young freelance writer, stumbles across an abandoned building in the forest behind her house. She discovers it was once a research center for something called Project Ackerman, an experiment based on teaching a machine to feel emotion. After reading the files and seeing the machine itself, Petra decides to try and continue it herself, but there are those who rather she not
1. Chapter 1

**This is just an idea I suddenly had. Please dont hate me for not updating, but this time Im serious. Im on break, so updates will be coming. AoT Shorts, maybe Sang, Coffee Shop, and yes, maybe Battlegrounds.**

 **The title is subject to change.**

 **I ask you to please leave a review. Fav or follow if you feel like it. I just really want some feedback, thanks.**

Petra let her head fall and hit the desk with a loud thunk, accompanied with a long groan, then instantly a feeling made of pain and regret. Mostly pain.

 _Why did I do that?_

She lifted her head up and rubbed it, starting at the blank computer screen, looking at the little line blinking and wordless page. It was taunting her. Half an hour before, writing instead of unpacking had seemed like a good idea. Now, both of them seemed like bleak and boring tasks.

 _And now I've given myself a headache._

She sighed and stretched, then rested her hands on the keyboard, waiting for some words to come. None did. After a few moments of sitting stiffly, waiting for an idea, Petra let out a long and loud groan that echoed through the empty house. How did all those famous authors do it? Write an entire novel? Completely original? 100+ pages? She slumped in her seat, wishing that she'd been able to figure out how to reassemble her rolly-chair.

Petra sighed and looked outside the window at the endless wood. She could almost feel the brisk cold as she watched the wind lazily move around some dried leaves.

 _Screw you, leaves,_ she thought resentfully, then smiled at herself and made the decision to go outside. Petra scooted back the chair and put on her coat. _Just a short walk in the woods to clear my head, and maybe even brainstorm some ideas,_ she thinks, and opens the door, exposing herself to the chilliness. As she steps out onto the front porch her hair whips around her face and she holds it back, shutting the door with her foot.

Petra walks into the forest, her cheeks now already colored pink from the brisk wind. Leaves and small twigs crunch and crackle underfoot as she makes her own path through the woods. After a few minutes of silence dotted with nature sounds she lets out a sigh, her breath forming a cloud in from of her face. She smiles, remembering when she was little and thought that she was breathing magic. Then the smile shrinks as she remembers other parts of her childhood and the cold gets to her. With a shiver she puts her hands in her pockets and draws her arms closer to her body.

Broken sunlight dances on the ground as she ventures further into the woods, and for a second she thinks of going back, then decides against it. The cold isn't that biting and the the air pierces her lungs refreshingly. Petra takes a deep breath, spreading her arms wide, the sleeves of her jacket covering her wrists, too big for her. However, her breath catches in her throat as she sees a flat, grey building in the distance, built in a large clearing. She walks forward, studying it in confusion. Why would someone build something here? No trees dare grow within four yards of it, too afraid to come near. The concrete the building is made of is scarred, chipped, and weathered, and looks as if it has been standing for decades.

She cautiously approaches it, head cocked in curiosity. The possibility of a mystery burns deep inside of her. How many movies has she seen where the main character finds an old, abandoned building which leads to him or her going on an adventure? She creeps forward, then gulps. And how many has she seen where there's a murderer hiding in the said building?

However, the desire and possibility of a mystery overcomes her fear, and she walks around the side of the building, stumbling over chunks of concrete that have fallen. The entrance is...was made of two steel doors that have caved in partially. With some difficultly, she climbs over their twisted steel frames and jumps inside, landing with a grunt on tile floor. The noise echos endlessly through a maze of hallways as a small plume of dust rises from her feet. She walks forward, the only light provided by the doorway, glass and rock crunching under her feet.

It looks like she is in some kind of main hallway, other corridors branching out. She keeps walking, ignoring them. The hallway grows darker as Petra continues, and eventually the hallway walls turn to glass and she looks in to see a lab of some sort. The glass is thick and looks to be bulletproof, but that theory is soon deducted as she sights several small holes in the glass with spiderweb cracks branching off from them.

Petra peers through one of the long panels, then sights a door that will allow her to enter. At first she thinks it will be locked, but a closer inspection reveals that the handle has been shot off, leaving nothing by twisted metal. She cracks the door open, having to throw her weight against it to just get it partially open. Suddenly the hinges loud out a loud squeak, and the door opens easily, making her stumble into the room. With each step her boots leave prints in the dust. Long lab tables separate the room into sections. Near the back of the room is a large white table, surrounded by a curved section of computers, wires, and monitors. A fine layer of dust coats everything. Several machines are on their side, parts strewn onto the floor and smashed.

"What is this," Petra wondered allowed, fingertips tingling as she ran her hands over the surface of one of the lab tables. he sent a cloud of dust into the air as she wiped it of on her pants. She couldn't contain her excitement, somehow she felt this feeling...this strong feeling of being on the verge of a great discovery...

She wandered over to the clutter of wires and monitors, pressing a few buttons on the keyboards to see is they could be turned on. With baited breath she waited. Nothing happened. She sighed and continued deeper into the room, but the rest of it held nothing. It was just an empty space. Something...her intuition...a gut feeling, told her not to step there and she obeyed it.

Petra looked around, eyes settling on a heavy, expensive looking microscope.

 _This is most likely the stupidest thing I've ever done,_ she thought, picking it up with a small grunt, the cold metal a shock to her warm hands. With some difficultly she stepped forward and threw the microscope at the empty space, her boots slipping on the dusty floor. She fell forward, with a small cry and watched as the floor crumbled beneath the microscope, the hole widening and spreading toward her. Petra felt her lower body drop, now dangling into a black space blow her. She tried to pull herself up, the fact that she hadn't been to the gym in months burning painfully in her arms. Gritting her teeth, she bore the pain and slowly pulled herself back onto solid ground, halfway succeeding when the edge gave way, sending her down into the unknown.

Petra landed hard on her left foot, immediately collapsing on her side. Something hard broke her fall, knocking the breath out of her lungs. She lays there for a moment, heartbeat in her ears. Filthy light filters in through the hole, not bright enough to see by.

Something hard digs into Petra's waist and she pulls out her phone, wondering why she didn't think to use it before. She presses the home screen button, the sudden illumination stabbing her eyes. Once they become used to the light, Petra pushes herself up, slipping on some scattered papers. For the second time in as many minutes she crashes to the floor. Wincing, she grabs one of the papers she slipped on and holds it to the light of her phone.

"Project Ackerman," it reads.

Mouthing the title silently, Petra gathers up the other paperwork that has spilled out of a manila folder, but as she lights more of the room, she sees several stacks of the folders, all bursting with paperwork, along with many old and tattered journals. She opens one of the folders. It is filled with hundreds of papers, the first piece stating one message.

"Project Ackerman: Case File 1

Dr. Zoe Hanji

Project Ackerman, funded by the Scientific Advancement of Machinery, and led by Dr Zoe Hanji is now certified to begin."

Under the words are a bunch of number and letters that make no sense to her. Petra turns the page, her hands tingling at her fingertips. The next page is covered with messy handwriting.

 _Scientific Journal and Recordings of Project Ackerman_

 _Dr Zoe Hanji_

 _Acker means "ploughed field," so the surname Ackerman translates to ploughman from German and Old English, because that is what we-that is what he...that is what all of us are doing. As a verb, it is defined as_

 _ **1**_ _._

 _turn up the earth of (an area of land) with a plow, especially before sowing._

 _ **2**_ _._

 _(especially of a vehicle) move in a fast and uncontrolled manner._

 _We are "turning up" the earth of science, as stupid as it may sound. Nothing like this has ever been attempted before, and if it has, then it has failed. This study will plough through everything in this field of research. I know it will. My team is well put together, and they know it will take long. Years, Decades, perhaps. I do not think that all of them are prepared to go the distance...but they have all dedicated themselves to science, so I know they will stay with me for a long time._

 _Project Ackerman._

 _In a nutshell, we are attempting to teach, show...help a machine feel emotion. It sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, I know. But we are not making it feel emotion, no, we are programming it to feel emotion. We are simply helping it along. Our goal is to essentially have it work out how to act and feel during certain situations where emotion is required. We will teach it everything a human child is to know; treat it as an infant. We have theorized it will work out how to feel by itself...not many believe that this will work._

 _I do._

 _It...him, the machine we are teaching to feel; he is of my colleagues design, Hajimari. He is one of the best minds in robotics in the world. He never struck me as having a sense of humor, but as I study the design of the machine, I don't bother to hide my smile._

 _The machine is as humanoid as it can be, synthetic skin that is warm and almost too real to touch...eyes that are so alive and seem to hold...I don't know...something. It sounds stupid, clichéd, I know. This journal is supposed to be purely scientific. I guess I can edit out these parts in the final draft. The one I show to my superiors._

 _The machine's features are sharp and dark...they are kind of scary to be honest. It's hair is styled in a undercut, which Hajimari says is one of his friends' hairstyles. All of us know it's a lie; he is just growing out his hair from an undercut._

 _It is short._

 _About 5,3," I believe._

 _Hajimari doesn't give a reason for this._

 _Despite my words on how an undercut is a dorky haircut, he doesn't change it._

 _We haven't even powered it up yet...I'm still amazed about how lifelike it is. If I didn't know better, I'd swear it's a real person...and I guess that's kind of what we're trying to achieve here. I wonder what will happen it when we actually do it. If we actually do it._

 _It learns fast. The machine is intelligent and though it's only been "awake" for a week, it has a grasp on how the world works. We plug it into the web everyday and stream to it thousands of videos everyday. That is the simplest way of describing the process._

 _I talk to it like it's a real person, and my team members do too. They are hesitant to do so, at first, but it can make conversation and even teaches us things._

 _I've named it Levi._

And that's where Petra stops reading, even though curiosity burning her like a hot iron. She needs a moment to process everything that she's just read. Petra lays the file down on the floor and curls her legs beneath her. She extends her arms backward to support herself and her fingers curl around something circular and stiff. She brings her phone up to see what she has landed on, and it clatters to the floor as she lets out a scream, sending light spinning across the room as it slides away, the sound echoing.

A face.

She'd seen a face.

A body.


	2. Chapter 2

**I am extremely excited about this fanfiction...it is basically the rough draft for a novel I am working on, but, no, Ostara, not the one I told you about. This is for a different one. :D I'm do happy to have received so many positive responses, and will be working hard! Expect big surprises and twists from this story. I will update pretty often, and because I am so animated about this idea, I will be updating quite often...and I feel so guilty about putting my other stories to the side...sorry other stories!**

 **Lately, the plot bunnies in my head have been breeding like MAD, and I get no peace...I am writing a manga and this, and my other novel...**

 **Anyway, all I ask of you, Reader-San, is that you please leave a review. I want to know what you think. Fav and follow if you feel like it!**

It was night, but it could have been day and no one would know. Large, dark storm clouds hide the once blue sky and the rain beats the roof like it has a grudge against the shingled surface. The storm yells, and shouts its displeasure, crashing and smashing with growls and snarls. Petra shudders with each large clap of thunder and flash of lightning. She hates storms. They make her hair stand on end and senses go on edge.

She is sitting in the middle of her living room, surrounded by the pile of files and a few boxes. The power had gone out a few minutes after the storm had turned serious, and Petra had been forced to blunder around until she found some candles, courtesy of her mother. She'd never been one for the small, scented, wax cylinders, but now they were coming in handy, though now the air smelled like a Peppermint Swirls and Cherry Lemonade, a scent that was surprisingly pleasant.

She sighed and pulled one of the candles closer, its flickering flame providing barely enough light to see by.

 _I've named it Levi. In Hebrew, Levi means attached or pledged. I'm not sure why I've done this, and I don't think it's a good thing to let the others on my research team know... Moblit, maybe. He might understand. I feel as if the machine is a young child, though one that is much smarter and more observant. I watch it watch us and copy the motions we do..he understands what the gestures we make mean. Today, when we powered him up, he held his hand out for a handshake! It was not something we taught him, nor was it in any of the videos we've streamed to him so far...this is utterly amazing!_

 _At first, I was confused, and the rest of my team was also. Why was this machine holding its hand out to us? Moblit was the first to realize what it meant. He stepped forward and shook...Levi's...hand with a smile. Moblit's young face was bright, his eyes shining when he turned to me._

 _"Dont you see?" he said. "It watches us. It comprehends what we do and what each action means." He let go of Levi's hand and stepped back, and I walked forward, my face full of awe. This..this was amazing..unexpected...unpredictable..._

 _I shook his hand, the synthetic skin feeling warm on mine._

 _"Do you know what this is?" I asked him._

 _"Of course, Dr Hange," he'd answered. "It is the customary greeting among acquaintances, is it not?"_

 _I do not yet know what to make of that answer._

 _Late that day, when most had left but Moblit and me, I spoke to him, and introduced Levi to his name._

 _"Levi."_

 _He had turned to me, eyes studying my features and assessing me, I knew. "What is a Levi," he asked, voice rising appropriately like it was supposed to at the end of a question. We hadn't taught him to do that yet, but slowly, his voice was changing. In the beginning, it had been cold, deeper, and metallic, but now, now it had some warmth. It sounded almost like a real voice, somehow, but that artificial tone would always be there._

"...amazing," Petra breathed, setting down the paper and staring into the near darkness. She was trying to fully comprehend what she had just read. It seemed impossible, but her chest was burning, her eyes wide and mouth slightly open. This was real. It was real.

"I...cant..believe it," she muttered into the silence, the expression of shock and awe still on her voice. She smiled a bit. _I must look like Moblit did,_ she thought.

The storm had quieted down a bit, the thunder still complaining in the distance in an annoyed rumble, and now the candle had flickered down to a small flame. It had wore itself out. Suddenly daylight flooded the room. A ghostly, blue, false daylight that illuminated every corner of the room. It was so bright, like the sun had turned itself sapphire. For a slice of a second, all noise was gone and Petra's eyes looked right to the far wall of the room, where a figure was slumped against the wall.

And then the almost unearthly silence was broken by a high keening wail and a crash of thunder so loud it shook the house and made the very walls tremble. Petra let out a small cry and pressed her face to the floor, covering her ears and squeezing her eyes shut. The candle went out fearfully, and the storm seemed to leave in the echoes of its finale. She was left in silence, her heart beating like a rabbit's, the darkness molding her fears. Slowly, the rain began a small apology, barely making a sound.

Breathing heavily, she rose, her eyes searching the blackness for some familiar shape. A small whirring noise filled the room, followed by a series of small clicks.

 _Ahh, yes, the backup generator kicking in, finally,_ Petra sighed, holding a hand to her heart and willing it to calm down. _Soon the lights will be on._

And then two orbs of blue pierced the darkness. She let out a gasp and stumbled back, hands trying to grasp some surface that would keep her from falling. They found none, and she thumped to the floor, trembling, keeping her eyes focused on the two lights.

They were a sci-fi blue, not a dark one, and were extremely bright, but small, and _like eyes..._ Petra realized. Two tiny, barely visible pinpricks of light appeared beneath them. And another series of clicks filled the room, though now they were softer and almost impossible to hear. The two bright orbs suddenly rose and disappeared for a second before reappearing, and a voice sounded.

"Hello. I am feeling fine today. How are you, Dr Hange?"

And then it waits a few moments, for an answer, but it does not come. The blue orbs turn to her and draw closer, and Petra backs away as best she can while on the ground. As they draw closer, the light they give out shows the outline of a face. Petra's breath quickens as soft footsteps stop in front of her, and she can just make out a hand held out to her. After a moment's hesitation, she takes it, a feels herself lifted easily to her feet by a steady strength. She is now level with its head and she can make out its face easily. It looks so human, and Petra feels its skin, so warm and life like. She stares at it, speechless. Its eyes appear inquisitive and curios as they dart around her face, and it speaks.

"I am called Levi. What is your name?"

Petra is so shocked, she almost forgets to speak, but she licks her lips and swallows, then answers. "I..I'm Petra Ral..."

"Hello, Miss Ral. How are you?"

"Im..fine..thank you..,,and please, call me Petra," she answers, thinking back to what she had just read about his voice. It still sounds false...cold...emotionless.

"You're welcome. Where are Dr. Hange and her colleagues?"

His eyes begin to hurt as they stare into hers, so bright, and she looks away. "I don't know. I found you in a building; it was abandoned. I-"  
"I was abandoned. I know. She told me. I was there for years. It felt..." He seems to search for the right words...to describe the feeling, "empty." The small pinpricks of light that seem to come from his chest pulse slightly, and seem to form an "N," but Petra pays no attention to that. Her thoughts are racing. _This is amazing..Im talking to it...we're having a conversation..I can continue this experiment...I can do the research...this..this is big._

"Ok..well, um..Levi, can you please stay right here while I go and get my penlight?" she asks.

"Yes," he answers

"Thanks." She feels the wall and makes her way to her office, the only room in the house that is fully unpacked, and can barely make out the faint outline of her desk. She puts her hands and feels around for her keys and her hand brushes something. Moments later she hears her keyboard crash to the ground. "Aww...shoot," she says and moves her hands around. She hears the familiar jungle of metal on metal and picks her keys up, flicking on the penlight. A small sliver of light shoots through the darkness and she makes her way back to the living room. "Alright, Levi, Im back."

He is in the same position she left him in, and as she enters, he acknowledges it with a slight turn of his head. Petra uses the light to find the matches, and in a few minutes, the room is once again lit with the small flames. Petra sits back down in her spot and picks up the file to resume reading.

 _I tell him that he is Levi, and what the name means. He is confused at firsts, and tells Moblit and me that he has no name, but I tell him that he does now. The expression on his face is one I cant read, but I sense that he likes the fact that he has a name. It does take a while for him to get used to it; at first when I call his name he doesn't answer to it, but rather to the fact that I shouted. Eventually, however, it does happen._

 _Answering to a name was never programmed into him, expressions were not programmed into him..these are things he does by himself. Though the progress is slow and almost nonexistent, it is there._

That is the end of the page, and Petra lays it back in the folder and sighs, feeling tired. She looks up at Levi. "Hey, Levi?"

"Yes?"

"What do I have to say to get you to turn off," she asks, feeling awkward asking the question.

"All you have to do is order me to, Petra," he answers.

"Ok, then, well, Im going to call if a night, so uh...yeah..please power down." She stands and watches as he walks to the far end of the room and stands facing outward, and his eyes grow dim until they give no light. He closes them and becomes perfectly still, as if made of stone.

Petra walks over to him and studies his features, holding a candle to his face. He looks like someone who is asleep standing up, but his chest does not rise and fall. He does does not breath. _If he was human,_ Petra muses, _Id consider him to be quite handsome._ And with that thought, she snuffs out the candles and leaves.

 **Sooo, how did you like it? I did some research and spent hours on this chapter...I have a feeling this fanfic will turn out to be awesome! Please review, and thanks for reading!**


	3. Chapter 3

_We don't control what feelings or emotions Levi develops, but rather record them. It's been seven months into the experiment, and I am shaking with… I don't know what has me trembling. Exhilaration. Adrenaline. Levi has learned to feel something. A normal day involves my team powering him up, speaking a bit, and then streaming videos to him. We do this twice a day, six hours for each session. In between we talk about what he's seen and what he thinks, and I always encourage my team to give their views. A regular person is exposed to opinions of those around him almost every second. I will make it as similar as I can for Levi._

 _Yesterday, he told me he hates sleeping. Sleeping refers to when we leave for the night and power him off. Levi is much too reserved to hide or try to avoid this, but I see the distaste in his eyes. I asked him if he doesn't like this, and he told me that he doesn't. This was the conversation:_

 _"What do you feel when we leave each night? I see that you don't like it."_

 _"It makes me feel… makes me want for you all to come back."_

 _"But you're powered off for the whole night. You don't feel anything."_

 _"What you say is true… I feel nothing, but it's a bad nothing." (He has recently stopped using phrases like "do not," "can not," and "it is." Levi now uses conjunctions. It isn't something we've taught him he learned by himself.)_  
 _I was quite puzzled at his answer. 'Bad nothing?' What did he mean by that? I realized that he might be trying to describe how he felt, and a chill ran through me. Levi continued._

 _"It's like a wave. At night. Like the beach, but an empty beach. There is no people. And it's dark and empty."_

 _His eyes studied mine, asking me to explain to him what this was and how to stop it. I could almost dance with happiness. Loneliness. This is what he was feeling, and he had no way to describe the emotion._

Petra looked over at Levi, who was hooked up to several monitors, his eyes closed and body still. They were in her dining room, an ovular room at the back of her house. Most of the walls were big windows that showed the mixed forest behind the small dwelling. The room had a hardwood floor wand was spacious, though now the back half of it was taken up my boxes, paperwork, and machinery, all bought from the building with Levi's help. That morning, the two had journeyed to the abandoned lab. Petra was lucky he was able to recognize what technology they needed, and he was strong enough to carry it back, which she was thankful for.

Levi even knew how to use the equipment, telling her that Hanji had explained how, and he was now streaming thousands of videos, and would be doing so for the next two hours. Petra had decided to continue the experiment, and would document everything, but first, she had to finish reading everything the original scientist had written. Petra had already read hundreds of scientific entries, interactions with Levi, and she was amazed. This was more incredible than anything she had ever heard, read or watched. More exhilarating than the wildest action movie.

Petra paused from reading the account to look over at Levi once more. The first emotion he had ever felt was loneliness. She wondered if he knew that he was an experiment. She wondered if he even knew he wasn't human, and an intense feeling of sadness swept over her. What would have happened to him if the experiment had been finished? It was cruel, she realized. For him to learn how to feel and then... and then what? Had it all been taken away? Did he remember what he had learned to feel?

Petra had studied him every second when they had fetched the equipment. His moments were barely robotic, the only thing giving him away that he wasn't human his brilliant blue eyes. He had kept a poker face, his voice rising and falling naturally, but too formal; polite. She had not detected a single change in his demeanor. The young writer turned back to reading the journal, and a few seconds later, gasped at what she was reading.

 _Plough: to move in a wild, controlled manner, remember? Well, I feel like that's what we are doing. Careening, smashing...crashing. What am I doing? I don't know. This journal must never see outside of my lab, for what I am about to write will get me fired or locked up by the very people I work with._

 _I think I've fallen in love with the robot. Him. Levi. My own experiment that does not know what a dog is. What clouds are. What seasons are. What snow is. He knows nothing, and I can't fathom how or why I now feel this way. I can't even look at it from a scientific point of view. And yet…_

 _And yet._

 _I love him. This isn't mother's love, though it is just as strong. Not a researcher astounded by the success of his experiment. Not even the tender love of a pet or small, defenseless animal. He is all of that, and I feel all of that. I began to realize this a few weeks ago, but I did not dare write it down. All of this is so wonderful, but terrible, as I remember that he is an experiment. And if he does not show progress, then he will cease to exist. Before, I was driven by love for science, but now, I am driven by that thought._

 _Unpredictable. Stuff like this doesn't happen. It doesn't. Only in movies, books, TV shows. It doesn't happen. But somehow it is happening. And I can't stop it. I should have seen this coming. I should have, but I didn't. Once this experiment is done, they're going to do it again. And again. And again. Why? Think about it. A machine just like a human, but stronger, more durable. The perfect weapon. This is a cliche straight out of a movie, but it's real. It's real, and I can't stop it. I see their reasoning. If a machine can be taught how to feel, to act human, then it can be taught select emotions. A perfect soldier without fear, love, or attachment. An assassin with no emotions at all. This is the information, the technology, my experiment will provide. And I can't let anyone know that I know._

 _I must retain my usual disposition as happy, crazy, and oblivious. They will never suspect, because I am not a threat to them. A loose cannon that is corralled. That is what I must be. For now._


End file.
